Project

Climate Change, Uncertainty and Transformation

Uncertainty has emerged as a problem for scientists and policy makers alike in climate change decision-making. This study states that uncertainty in climate change has been narrowly conceptualised from above (by scientists, experts and decision-makers). In doing so, the day-to-day experiences and practices of local people around uncertainty have been ignored, resulting in flawed actions.

Uncertainties in climate change projections are particularly high and there remains no consensus around how to integrate uncertainty in climate change decision-making. Despite these problems, quantitative assessment (usually based on probabilities and ecological risk assessment) remains at the heart of the scientific method. This project sees uncertainty as a key barrier to efforts to support social transformation to respond to the challenges posed by climate change.

It seeks to:

Explore discourses and practices of climate change uncertainty and transformation from ‘below’ and from ‘above’ and how they interact in diverse settings in India;

Study to what extent the discrepancy between uncertainty understandings is a barrier to social transformation necessary to adapt to climate change;

Develop approaches to bridge the different perspectives of uncertainty from ‘above’ and ‘below’ in order to foster more productive and socially just ways of dealing with uncertainties and social transformation.

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Recent work

Opinion

In light of the devastating floods of August 2018, the state needs to introspect on its approach to development.
The worst floods in living memory
Disaster struck the Indian coastal state of Kerala at an unprecedented scale this month. The worst flooding in living memory inundated large...

Opinion

A southasiadisasters.net special issue has launched at the 2018 Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction entitled “Understanding Uncertainty: Views from Kachchh, Mumbai, and Sundarbans”.

Brief

The semi-arid district of Kachchh in Gujarat, India is known for its erratic rainfall, water scarcity, and droughts. Climate change has intensified extreme temperature and rainfall patterns and also led to changes to the long coastline.

Brief

Despite unprecedented wealth accumulation, coastal Mumbai suffers from a myriad of socioeconomic and ecological challenges as well as connected uncertainties. These include endemic flooding, shrinking of sensitive ecosystems, inequality, and marginalisation of natural resource-dependent...

1 January 2018

Brief

The majority of the five million people that live in the deltaic Indian Sundarbans face continuous uncertainties in relation to their shelter, livelihoods, and health. Climate change is one of the key factors aggravating this situation.

1 January 2018

Opinion

Images of flooding from Houston and Mumbai have shown the vulnerabilities that an urbanised world faces. Yet this is not the first time that epic rainfalls have been so destructive, what can governments and the global community learn from these floods?

Opinion

Reflecting on her childhood holidays in Kashmir, and the subsequent and damaging impact of climate change in the area, Upasana Ghosh asks what should come first, ecological safeguards or political freedoms?